Do you know if the person coming to fit your floor has any formal qualifications or what level of experience they have?

It’s sad to say but in the flooring industry few fitters have any certification and anyone can just pick up the tools of the trade and call themselves a flooring fitter, without attending any training and we don’t have a trade body to properly register with.

Here at Charles Wilson we employ half of our fitting team just so we can be sure of their levels of training and expertise before we send them out to you at home. There are courses from carpet fitting to hard flooring fitting such as for vinyl, vinyl tile and wood floorings.

Products are always being re-invented, new ways of fitting created and brand new types of flooring being introduced, so it is very important we keep our team in the loop and up to date.

Our two experienced fitters have been on some of the FITA courses and our apprentice is just about to embark on his. To learn more about FITA see their website: http://www.fita.co.uk/

Almost as important to us has been the handing down of years of experience from one generation of fitters to another. There is no substitute for time spent on the job and our two original fitters had over 90 years know-how between them! In turn the passed they passed this on to our current Head Fitter who is now doing the same for our latest apprentice.

Remember to ask your fitter, retailer what experience they have as no matter how good a flooring you buy, if it's fitted badly it will never show its quality! Guarantees can also be affected if it not installed correctly.

We are starting a short series on frequently asked questions. Having been in business for over 40 years we have been asked almost anything you can think of regarding flooring and fitting. For this blog I asked our Company Director, Mark, to see what our customers want to know most and what his answer is.

Mark’s most frequently asked question was:

“Do you have your own fitters?”

Employing a good part of our fitting team has always been key to Charles Wilson’s customer service so the answer is most definitely yes. However, as we now tackle many more types of flooring than just the carpets we started out with in the 1970’s, we do also employ specialist fitters to compliment our own in house team.

Our own in house trained team consists of 3; Nick, Keith and Sam. Nick was trained by our former fitting team who had decades of experience between them and Nick has since helped train Keith & Sam. This continuity has meant we keep the same standards of fitting throughout and some of the traditional methods of fitting that many firms no longer offer i.e. sewn seams and bullnoses. All undertake training courses to keep their skills up to date.

Nick at work

We find employing our fitters also gives us much more flexibility to help customers (i.e. with timings, assisting with furniture) often a sub-contractor from a larger firm may not be given the time to offer you this service. Charles Wilson guarantee our fitting and so we try to instil the need for care and attention, which again is much easier with members of staff that care more about the customer’s impression of their work. Basically they have pride in us as a team and in what they do.

There are times though when we are busy or need a specialist that we do use some sub-contractors i.e. for Altro (hard vinyl) which requires welding, wooden flooring which may need more carpentry. We have a trusted list of people who support us and whose work we have confidence in. Again this work is also under our guarantee so you have nothing to worry about should we send a contractor on our behalf.

We might be a smaller family firm but we have a wealth of experience in our fitting team of which we are very proud.